Look after each other

DRACONIAN clampdowns to reduce and slow the spread of coronavirus across the United Kingdom will dramatically change the way we live for the next three months and perhaps much longer after that.

This is a moment when we must show we are kind, considerate and good citizens, sacrificing much of what we usually enjoy to protect not only ourselves but millions of others.

Yet it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that intensifying efforts only four days after Boris Johnson was playing down the immediate need for intervention on this scale that the Prime Minister’s mishandled the crisis.

Urging people to stay out of pubs, restaurants and theatres, avoiding unnecessary travel and working from home are big steps.

So too is requiring singles to isolate themselves for at least a week if they have a cough or cold or everybody in a family or shared house to lock themselves away for a fortnight if one member shows signs of Covid-19.

Equally the effective quarantining of high risk groups, including the elderly, for up to three months, is a significant demand with social risks when isolation is debilitating.

When the Government claims that without drastic measures the total of coronavirus victims could double every five or six days, the switch is understandable.

Tory austerity over the past decade weakened a National Health Service already on its knees before the flood of fresh cases.

The Budget last week is overtaken by the mounting threats to wages and jobs when the disease is hammering the economy, a deep recession is considered almost inevitable.

Britain needs a bailout to survive, guaranteeing people’s wages and saving otherwise viable businesses from restaurants to airlines.

Gordon Brown and Labour rose to the challenge of the 2008 global banking collapse and led the world rescue. Johnson must act now.